Halo 2 Critic Reviews

One of Halo 2 Online's best features - if not the best - is the statistics tracking system.

The digital surround sound is phenomenal (and the voice-acting peerless), and players with a good A/V system will enjoy hearing enemies approach from all sides due to the sharp positional sound.

Microsoft and Bungie have created a gigantic bell that sounds like thunder and reverberates with a fury worthy of a gale-force hurricane. It's not perfect, but get in front of it, and wonderful things - wonderful destructive things - are bound to happen.

Halo 2's Campaign mode is a luminous experience and testament of Bungie's rare talent for mixing gorgeous cinematics with captivating and fun gameplay segments, but it also serves as the concrete foundation for the game's multiplayer, making simple deathmatches, team skirmishes and CTF games that much more engaging.

Halo 2 online is not total perfection, but it's miles better than anything out there right now, by a long long way... It's a genuine milestone in online console gaming.

Quite simply an indescribably phenomenal gaming experience that redefines both the first person shooter genre and next generation gaming.

The new "Dual Wielding" option allows you to pick up two guns at once and use them together, which provides a feeling that again, other shooters just don't come anywhere near.

This game goes where no Xbox Live enabled game has gone before.

The campaign mode introduces a ton of new elements, not only to the game itself, but also to the Halo universe as a whole. As for the multiplayer, you won't find a better Xbox Live experience anywhere, and you can be sure that Halo 2 will be topping the Live charts for years to come.

The combination of a great campaign mode along with a goldmine of multiplayer options makes for an unbeatable gaming experience.

Simply put, Halo 2 is by far the greatest first-person shooter the console world has seen to date...Nothing I say can prepare you for this game.

The graphics are hotter than ever, and the bump-mapping technology, which gives even simple textures an illusion of depth and reality, looks even better than you could've imagined.

From the huge gameplay twist early on, to taking down a giant walking tank, to way late in the game when you team up with certain...teammates, all the way to an end that'll leave you with the same breathless feeling you had when you first watched "The Empire Strikes Back"...moments like these turn a fun game into a monumental experience.

Unlike October's blockbuster "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," Halo's masses of content have been tossed in a strainer and all serve to make the main game better, rather than simply providing more for the player to do.

But where the sequel will really fondle your boys is in the multiplayer modes. New level designs let you funnel the action into wide-open areas or allow you to stalk the terrain's nooks and crannies looking for the perfect sniping spot.

The sound in Halo 2 is the best I have ever heard in any game... Each weapon has such a distinctive sound now that you know what is going on in the next room before you even get there, from the rattle of a SMG to the haunting whistling of a Hunter's beam.

The Multiplayer is so incredibly fun that when you have a large group of people over playing you lose track of time and can (from personal experience) spend over 17 hours straight playing Multiplayer without realizing it.

Utterly essential.

From the deep stat tracking to the games ability to match you up with people your own ability,the clan and party support, and huge number of game modes, Halo 2's multiplayer is definitely a revolution for console multiplayer games.

The multiplayer promises to elevate Halo 2 online gameplay to "Counter-Strike" status with the added attraction of Xbox Live full voice support.